MODELING THE SLIDING/FALLING LADDER PARADOX.

Recently we were presented with an interesting twist to the sliding ladder problem viewed in the related rates section of most calculus textbooks. Our problem concerning a sliding ladder that eventually hits the ground. At first, those attempting this problem fell into the calculus trap using only related rates. Previous work for this problem included higher order systems of differential equations in the solution. This paper discusses a new direction with modeling issues, several modeling based solutions, and numerical methods to solve these models using a spreadsheet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]